There's No Place Like Home.

So that other thing I was going to get to.

Why, when we can only afford a 64 x 256 metre of mainland, would we want to continue. When everyone (who belonged and RPed in more than one sim) had a place to go, why would we even bother trying to keep the dream alive?

I have asked myself this a lot. The only thing I did know is I felt a nasty gap in the place my Second Life once was. While everyone else was moving on, I had never felt so alone in-world. You would think I would log out and do something else. But when something has been part of your daily life for so long, it isn't so easy to do. Home is a complicated issue for me in both on and off the Grid, and I admit that this is factoring heavily into my real life at the moment.

So I went looking, at all the many fantasy sims that I could find. (Fantasy is the only thing I am interested in when it comes to Second Life) I found plenty of good RP sims, maybe a couple where we could fit. Either with alts or with seriously modified story lines.

But the reasons I couldn't settle was more than my snobbish frowning upon sims with furry and child avatar hatred. The reality is, I don't have any alts so crucial to my happiness that I could depend on them solely. And editing people out of our main's joint storylines was sort of like erasing parts of their own character's core personalities. Basically, making them different characters.

I don't think it is a secret that the conception of The Seven Isles and it's vision predated me, nor was the philosophy of family and acceptance my own. Except I knew when I found it I had found home. Because I knew when I found it, that this is what I would do, if I were to start a community in Second Life. You could say, that is why I joined up on staff when the opportunity was offered to me. The Seven Isles wasn't just the perfect sim, it was practically my real life dreams of Utopia.

A simple life, something no one has in the real world. Epicurus called it Ataraxia. Ataraxia is very important to me in my personal life as well. I have mentioned before that RP was my Ataraxia.

What I have learned is that out of all of these good RP sims, We actually did provide something unique. No classes, no cliques, no guilds or factions. Instead we had equality, families and trades that helped us express and celebrate our individuality. I have always known that we were never a big and as bad ass as a lot of these other sims, I never really wanted to be.

Uniqueness is not what people usually want, no matter what they say. People want familiarity and mainstream for a reason. One knows what to do and what to expect in those situations, and that is understandable. People like structure and leadership. But for me, those are "chains" in a way. there is a Jim Morrison quote that sums it up for me,

"People are terrified to be set free – they hold on to their chains. They fight anyone who tries to break those chains. It's their security"

What he is saying here, is people can not always feel safe enough to do something with out some firm parameters. Perhaps that is why our community in itself, was unique people without parameters. I can not speak for anyone else but myself, but this is why I felt so lost.

So I guess you could say, our very humble (and perhaps doomed) desire to rise from the ashes are for selfish reasons. However knowing that we had something that others did not, I can not help but think there are others out there seeking what we had. Perhaps it *is* a minority (and Gods know lower numbers don't pay the bills) but I think it is a minority worth at least trying keeping alive.

I just need a world where things made in imagination are flesh. I need a world where children play and explore. I need a place of growth, and intrigue, and peace. If I want to beat the shit out of something I'll play Dungeon Siege